You never can tell what will impress a client, but usually the stamped aluminum caps on rebars are a good guess. I got a call from a client this morning who has enough money to buy various million-dollar properties adjoining his in order to protect the views from his house. Sounds reasonable to me.
Unfortunately, I've got at least a 60-day backlog and told him that I couldn't take his project on considering other commitments I'd made. It sounded to me as if he really should have surveys of the adjoining properties made before he wrote the checks in the millions to buy them, so I mentioned the names of a couple of surveyors I would suggest contacting to see what their workload was like, that I was reasonably certain that both were fully qualified to to it.
"Do they set markers like yours?" he asked. He was referring to the 5/8-inch rebar with 2-inch Aluminum Cap stamped with professional identification and a corner i.d. no. that I've used forever. I probably set the markers on his lot more than 15 years ago.
"Yours are the only survey markers I've been able to find," he continued.
Just setting an identifiable marker up about an inch was all it took to do the trick.
After reading your posts extolling this type of marker, I started using them myself a few years ago and I've been very pleased. They look much better in the lawn of an expensive house than the usual plastic caps, and the clients seem to appreciate them.
I usually set the capped rebars flush. For monuments that I want to leave sticking up a few inches I bought matching aluminum caps for 1" pipe.
Jeff
Yes, the aluminum caps are easier to add a new punch mark at the actual corner location.
And the next guy (or gal) ....
can add another punch mark to start the pin cushion. 😉
And the next guy (or gal) ....
> can add another punch mark to start the pin cushion. 😉
Kent usually does a pretty good job setting the corners so upon retracement, the true corner still falls on the (oversize) cap.
It's probably because your caps are just so darn cordial -
> Yes, the aluminum caps are easier to add a new punch mark at the actual corner location.
Nah, no need for a pincushion, just pull Kent's and replace it with my own. That's the way it is done here in Texas. Everybody is wrong but the last guy who ran the survey.:-D
:good: 😀
heh heh. you can see the punch mark 0.04' away from the +.
nice job.
> After reading your posts extolling this type of marker, I started using them myself a few years ago and I've been very pleased. They look much better in the lawn of an expensive house than the usual plastic caps, and the clients seem to appreciate them.
Yes, for just a few bucks you can drastically upgrade the client's perception of the quality of the service.
Here's one I'll remember for a while because it was surprisingly difficult to set. I had to shovel away the gravel, cut through some permeable barrier, dig out a foot and a half of loose fill, fill in the hole with compacted caliche, set the rod and cap, and then reinstall the gravel to get the clean result seen.
And the next guy (or gal) ....
Not if I were there - I'd always call 'em off by a few tenths!
That's more like .03 ............
The client only sees (generally) two items for a product; a piece of paper, and his/her property corner monuments. After paying several thousand dollars, he doesn't have a fence or a physical improvement of note at all. It seems like for the little extra cost of setting a good, solid monument, he or she might at least feel a little better about what they paid for than seeing some little piece of plastic that looks like something they might pay $2.00 for to screw on to some kind of pipe.
Admittedly, the client doesn't see the real bulk of the work of sorting out complicated (at least in metes-and-bounds states) descriptions that don't close, with gaps and gores to adjoiners, the research of senior/junior rights, the study of all possible encumbrances, etc. They only see a few caps in the ground and a pretty piece of paper.
Good idea setting at least a substantial monument.
> The client only sees (generally) two items for a product; a piece of paper, and his/her property corner monuments.
Yes, the tangible products that the client receives are the main means by which the quality of the work is judged. Since most clients seem to be functionally illiterate when it comes to maps, the markers and written reports are where the action is.
That's Awesome!
Heck, my state doesn't even require caps, so I feel like by using the plastic caps I'm doing better than most surveyors in my area.
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Looks like this was taken somewhere near Lake Travis. You can see the receding shoreline through the trees. We need some rain in Texas! I kept telling my coworkers when I lived in Burnet that I wouldn't mind seeing San Saba floating down the Colorado since it would mean Lake Buchanan would be filling up.
> Looks like this was taken somewhere near Lake Travis.
Yes, the punchmark is at
30°23'20.18581" N
97°58'04.94966" W
NAD83 (2011) Epoch 2010.0
"more or less" 🙂
> "more or less"
Well, I hate to mention this, but the standard errors of the latitude and longitude values are +/-0.006 ft. :>
